About

My cooking philosophy…

Easy + Impressive. We all need quick, nutritious, grab-and-go meals. But my first goal when cooking is to create impressive flavors. I’m willing to put in extra time and effort if I can wrangle a little more flavor or texture or pleasure out of a bite.

The recipes you’ll find on Weekday Pescatarian are tested over and over to find a balance between easy and impressive. Life (and our schedules) exist on a spectrum, so some will be insanely simple and perfect for weeknight meals or lunch on the go. Others require more complexity and are better suited for a weekend dinner party project. But each will have a big flavor pay-off. 

Lay-ah tha flav-ah. That’s right, friends. Cooking seafood, vegetables, ANYTHING, requires us to learn how to layer the flavor into our dishes. After a couple of decades traveling and taking classes from chefs in Paris and home cooks in Marrakech, learning to make Portuguese feijoada in Porto and Bacalhau in Lisbon, I have learned many important cooking principles. Chief among them is that most of us home cooks suffer from underseasoning our dishes. (See also, under-buttering.)

The recipes you see here will almost always encourage you to season throughout the preparation process, and at least once, prompt you to “taste and adjust seasoning”. Cooking presents too many variables (freshness of ingredients, seasonality, spiciness of individual peppers, just to name a few) for a recipe to present a one-size-fits-all solution.

So join me! Let’s layer on the flavor together.

Nostalgic. I love how food can elicit intense nostalgia. The smell of paprika, onions and butter takes me to my grandmother’s kitchen as she stands over a vat of Hungarian goulash, her deep, joyful cackle filling the tiny, linoleum-lined room.

The sticky, caramelized edges of a sliced sweet potato seared in butter and covered in brown sugar puts me at my mother’s side every Thanksgiving morning of my life, with the Macy’s parade blaring in the background.

The pungent, savory freshness of ginger scallion sauce lands me at a hawker stall in Singapore with my husband, mesmerized by the chaotic activity of vendors and customers around me.

It brings me so much joy to recreate these dishes, and I am constantly on the lookout for capturing new food nostalgia that I’ll carry into my next decade.

Some of my favorite recipes so far include:

What I’m doing when I’m not writing recipes and cooking…

Traveling (21 countries and counting!) and learning about new-to-me cultures slowly and deeply and especially through food. Hiking, especially oceanside.

I used to love to curl up with a good book, but now that I spend so much time in the kitchen, Audible and podcasts are my hobbies of choice.

Hosting friends for a long Sunday brunch or putting on a last-minute Tuesday night dinner party…cooking for and eating with people fills me with joy.

I also speak and write with an abnormal amount of ellipses…let’s pretend it’s normal.

Here’s the scoop…

What did you do before going all in on your food obsession?

Marketing and communications consultant. Ask me anything about TikTok! I know everything about it. (Reader, she knows nothing about it.)

Why are you obsessed with food?

I’ve had many heroes and hobbies in my life. I aspired to write like Sedaris, serve like Serena and dance like Bey.

Friends, this is not my reality.

But I can cook like Julia, Ina and Molly. And so can you!

Recipes (plus a little practice and confidence) give us the power to replicate unforgettable food moments. And even make some of our very own.

Why did you become a Weekday Pescatarian? Is that even a thing?

It is now! Two factors contributed to my lifestyle decision.

In 2021 I watched an old Ted Talk from Graham Hill about his decision to transition to a weekday vegetarian diet. 

I share his view that so many lifestyle diets present a binary choice that requires a high level of commitment and restriction. Can I swear off birria tacos forever? Have I already eaten my last fried chicken sandwich?

The second driving factor came when my husband and I moved to Lisbon in 2021. We had long contemplated the idea of living in Europe, and the middle of a global pandemic seemed as good a time as any to make the leap.

After 9 months living in the city center of Lisbon, we moved 15 miles outside the city to Cascais – a fishing village-turned-resort-community. For the first time in my life, I was living on the ocean with daily access to fresh fish. I was already an adventurous eater and confident cook, but these life changes presented a new opportunity.

And so, Weekday Pescatarian was born.

My goals were simple:

I’m not fanatical about the calendar. I assume Thanksgiving will continue to fall on the last Thursday in November. And you better believe my plate will include turkey. And not just because sausage leek stuffing tastes better with turkey than with sardines…but because being a weekday pescatarian gives me the flexibility to meet my goals without the mental baggage of restriction.

Are you trying to turn everyone into a Weekday Pescatarian?

Heck, no. I’m anti-fanatical. I’m fanatical about NOT being fanatical.

This lifestyle works for me. For my geography. For my season of life. For my goals.

You find what works for you. If you’re already doing Meatless Monday, maybe you can add Fish Friday to your weekly meal plan. How about Tuna Tuesday? Walleye Wednesday? Salmon Sunday? Swordfish Saturday?

If you add just one lunch and dinner of seafood per week, over a year you could significantly decrease your intake of red and processed meat and potentially your environmental footprint. But you will also improve your skills and confidence in the kitchen and strengthen your health. 

Or, you could just browse some delectable recipes and mouthwatering photos, cook a few, impress the heck out of your family and friends, and keep coming back for more. No commitment required.

See you soon…

• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Facebook